@Narses It is not Nathan Dowdell, but Jason Durall who, together with Chris Lites, disappeard from the credits page.
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@FrankF, indeed cough cough got the name wrong, mea culpa.
Oh, and btw, the campain page advertises this RPG as:
<<This is Conan roleplaying as Robert E. Howard wrote it – savage pulp adventure battling ancient horrors in the Hyborian Age>>
“as Robert E. Howard wrote it” and NOT as “a cultural consultant” wrote it.
@Modiphius, any statement on this?
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That’s a very good question. If they did not greenlight the new version or are not even aware that a book they had approved for publishing had been rewritten they could either demand another rewrite or even revoke the license. FASA for example lost their Star Trek license that way.
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That is indeed what they were supposed to do… However, in this case, they made an absolute shambles of it, to the extent that their own suggestions were actually culturally insensitive! Calling “martial arts” “unarmed combat” is a case in point. So is censoring the caste system. What an imbecile!
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I wouldn’t call the cultural sensitivity reader “names”.
We don’t know how the changes came into being.
Maybe the cultural sensitivity reader just flagged some potentially offensive texts, but the actual re-writing or re-naming was made by someone else?
This, I would expect, is the job of the writer of this source book. But there is no writer listed in the credits anymore.
The question is, who actually made those numerous changes?
And were those changes submitted to the Conan scholars, as they were quite significant in content and number?
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We are happy for discussions about our books, games, and products on this forum, but the ethos of those discussions should be respectful and altruistic. The discussion around the Conan the Wanderer edits has included language intended to intimidate or undermine the people of this company and the teams behind our games, and that won’t be tolerated. This forum should also be a welcoming place for our gaming community, and this language is also used to target the very people in gaming spaces we are trying to be respectful of. We are all human beings behind these screens, and our staff and community members all deserve respect. So please be mindful of what you say, and the discourse you engage in.
At Modiphius we are committed to developing games that appeal to everyone, that respect the subject matter and the real life inspiration it is derived from. That includes the kind of language we use and the way we represent minority communities, especially our own backers who approach us with concerns of harmful representation in our games, as was the case with this supplement.
We respect Robert E. Howard’s work, and we would like to reiterate: we haven’t changed anything he wrote, Cabinet Entertainment approved this version of the book, we were supported by the Conan scholars we’ve worked so closely with, and like any work of art or fiction this supplement is a product of our time and values.
No constructive points are being added to this discussion now, so this thread, and any new threads on the matter, will be closed. If you would like any more information, our statement is available on the Kickstarter posts.
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